Exclusive Interview | Now the poisoned
Pussy Riot activist speaks

If you want to visit the poisoned Russian Pussy Riot activist in the Berlin Charité hospital, you have to pass three police officers.

They secure Pyotr Verzilov’s hospital room and refuse entry for anyone who is not signed in. Pyotr, however, is completely relaxed when we meet him on Wednesday morning, even though he has only been released from intensive care on Monday.
“I am not afraid,” he says with a big smile.

“You in the West don’t understand this: as activists, we have been living with a certain risk for years, it’s nothing special.” The Berlin doctors ask visitors to wear surgical masks. However, the activist has been on the road to recovery for a while. “I’m fine again, and I hope that I’ll be released as soon as possible. And I want to go back to Russia.”
His girlfriend Veronika Nikulshina is worried about him wanting to go back to the country where he was presumably poisoned.

“I assume that the people who poisoned him once will try it again. So I don’t want him to go back. But it’s impossible to stop Pyotr.” On 11 September, the activist came home following a court hearing and started to feel unwell. Verzilov:

“I am firmly convinced that the Russian secret service is behind the poisoning. Maybe it was the Russian intelligence agency GRU. The poisoning was carried out so professionally that there can be no other conclusion. Maybe they tried a new poison cocktail on me, since my poisoning proceeded differently than in other cases. It didn’t take several days for me to notice something, but was immediately acute. I have no memory of the following days.”

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He lost his vision, orientation, and speech. If it hadn’t been for girlfriend Veronika, Pyotr would probably no longer be alive. She says: “First I didn’t know what was happening, but his heart was beating so fast and he was so confused that I called an emergency doctor in the middle of the night. Then it soon became clear that he had been poisoned, and we organized the transport form Moscow to Berlin. If I hadn’t been there that night, he would probably no longer be alive.”

In the following days, Verzilov fought for his life and only slowly regained consciousness. “I can hardly remember what happened to me. When I woke up, I thought that the head of the clinic in Berlin was a prison director, and I saw cats everywhere.”

One big question is the motive behind the poisoning

Pyotr Verzilov has become known for invading the pitch during the World Cup final, making the Moscow police look foolish. “There are two potential reason why the Russian secret service wanted to poison me. There’s the action during the World Cup final that had extremely annoyed them, and there’s my connection to the three Russian journalists who were murdered in Africa.”

Orkhan Dzhemal was a well-known war reporter, Aleksandr Rastorguev was a filmmaker, and Kirill Radchenko was a cameraman. They were murdered in July while conducting research on the Russian mercenary group, “Wagner”, in the Central African Republic.

The reason might have been that they were making a documentary on “Russian mercenaries” who were fighting there and had previously been active in Ukraine as mercenaries with ties to the Kremlin.

Pyotr Verzilov was close friends with filmmaker Rastorguev, in particular, and even wanted to fly to the Central African Republic with the journalists, but was then imprisoned following his storming the pitch during the World Cup final.

Verzilov: “I wanted to investigate what happened to the three journalists – and still do. This could be the reason why the secret service wanted to poison me. As a background, I think this is more likely than the World Cup action.” Verzilov allegedly received a report containing initial findings from Central Africa on 10 September – one day before the poisoning. Verzilov doesn’t want to mention any details yet. “We cannot make a public statement yet, but there’s interesting news”.
One thing is for sure: Verzilov wants to continue investigating his friends’ deaths. He will remain in Berlin for the next few days and will think about how to proceed. His father lives in Canada, but Verzilov definitely wants to go back to Moscow at some point. He is supported by “Cinema for Peace” founder, Jaka Bizilj, who visited him at the Charité every day. He had also organized the flight from Moscow to Berlin. Bizilj:

“We are happy that we were able to help so quickly and that Pyotr is feeling much better now. We also hope that this case will be clarified soon”.